A Spoonful of Sugar

by Brenda Ashford

  She was right: nursery nurses were invaluable as they enabled mothers to be released for war work. Now purpose-built nurseries like ours here in Redbourn were popping up all over the country. They were the forerunners of the ones that are everywhere today, but back then, nurseries were relatively unheard of.

  With the agreement of the Ministry of Labor, the wartime day nurseries were funded by the Ministry of Health, which supplied the capital and some of the maintenance costs. Local authorities set up the nurseries and contributed to their running costs through their Maternity and Child Welfare Committees. Ours was brand-new and had been built on the village common, sandwiched between the scout hut and the boys’ school.

  We had about thirty children divided between the baby room and another larger room for three- to five-year-olds.

  The children were a mixture of evacuees and locals. Their mums were all out hard at work, either in Luton at the Vauxhall factory making armaments, Brock’s Fireworks factory in Hemel Hempstead, which now made star shells that exploded in the air to illuminate the ground and reveal the position of the enemy, or the Sphinx factory in Dunstable, making parts for Spitfires. An old silk factory in Redbourn was also a big employer of local women. It had long since stopped producing silk and had been closed for years, but now a London tea firm had moved in to escape the blitz and was keeping the locals busy packing tea and coffee.

  For mums who had stayed at home to look after their children or perhaps had jobs in service, this must have come as an almighty shock; but despite the long hours they worked I only ever saw happy, cheery faces at the nursery doors. Perhaps they relished the opportunity to have a break from their children and to earn a bit of extra money.

  To look after these thirty children there was me in the baby room, a frosty matron by the name of Mrs. Bunce; two lovely, smiley young junior nursemaids in their teens named Beryl and Betty; a nursery school teacher in her thirties called Joy, who ran the three- to five-year-old nursery room; and the cook, an evacuee called Mrs. Ratcliffe.

  We also had an elderly lady volunteer from the village who came in and helped out, a kindly soul named Pat, with long silver hair to her waist and a face as wrinkled as a walnut.

  We were a mixed bunch—some with years of training under our belts and some with none—but despite this we all rubbed along together marvelously. The more experienced staff helped out the younger untrained girls and we all got along famously, with one exception.

  Sometimes when two ladies meet, the dislike can be instantaneous. And so it was with me and the disapproving Mrs. Bunce.

  Mrs. Bunce had trained at a rival college to Norland, St. Christopher’s, and I rather suspect she took against me because Norland was perceived to be the superior and better known institute. It didn’t matter what I did, from bathing the children to washing nappies, she knew a better way.

  “I think you’ll find, Brenda …” became Mrs. Bunce’s catchphrase. After dealing with her ladyship at Little Cranford I could handle a village know-it-all, but still, the rivalry between us was bubbling just beneath the surface at all times.

  That morning, as the nursery began to throb with life and Betty, Beryl, and the rest of the staff bowled in with a cheery greeting, I realized someone was missing. The officious Mrs. Bunce. She was usually here by 7:30 AM prompt. By 10:00, I started to get an uneasy feeling.

  “Anyone seen Mrs. Bunce?” called Joy, poking her head in the baby room. “The weekly food order’s got to be made and a fella from the council’s coming for some invoices.”

  “Not a trace of her,” I said. “Most mysterious.”

  Finally, at 10:30, a man from the council came by. I happened to be at the door when he arrived.

  “I’m afraid Mrs. Bunce isn’t coming back,” he said. “No reason. We’re appointing you as deputy matron, Brenda, until we can find a replacement. You can start now. Your salary will be fifteen pounds a week.”

  “B-but I don’t want …” I stuttered. My voice trailed off as the door slammed behind him and he beat a hasty retreat across the common.

  Just like that I found myself promoted.

  Oh, crumbs. I hadn’t signed up for this responsibility. Running a nursery of this size was like nothing I’d ever done before.

  “Congratulations, Nurse Brenda,” said the cook, walking up behind me. “You must be chuffed to bits.”

  But I wasn’t chuffed to bits. I was horrified. All I wanted to do was look after my babies, but now I had to run the place.

  Whatever happened to the mysterious Mrs. Bunce, I shall never know, but back then there simply wasn’t time to dwell on her disappearance. It was sink or swim!

  “Pull yourself together, Brenda,” I scolded myself. “How hard can it be?”

  Over the coming months I began to see exactly how hard running a nursery was during a war. A typical day went something like this:

  Oversee the bathing and dressing of thirty children.

  Prepare and feed breakfast.

  Administer cod-liver oil in a storm of protest.

  Comb thirty heads for nits.

  Check children for lice.

  Apply cream for impetigo.

  Prepare prams for babies’ walks, toddlers’ playtime.

  Boil wash woollies, nappies, cot sheets, and clothes.

  Fill bottles, prepare lunch, serve lunch, clear up.

  Get children down for naps, break up fights, clean up.

  Order weekly food, manage rations, issue means-tested invoices and nursery bills.

  Mending, shopping, administration.

  Teatime.

  Story time.

  Play time.

  Watch out for doodlebug rockets flying overhead.

  Change thirty children into day clothes, oversee home time.

  Scrub nursery from top to bottom.

  Draw blackout curtains and lock up.

  Phew. No wonder the day went by in the blink of an eye. Once I’d been made deputy matron, the months flew by as well. With every passing week I waited for a new matron to turn up and relieve me of my duties, but strangely no one ever showed up. After about six months I began to realize that no one would. I was now the new matron of Redbourn Day Nursery, whether I liked it or not.

  It makes me so cross when I think how child care workers’ roles in the war are often overlooked. One hears so little of our daily efforts.

  Hundreds of thousands of mothers could go to work, safe in the knowledge that their little ones were being cared for. We women workers—land girls in the fields, ladies in factories, or the women driving ambulances or trucks—worked our socks off. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat were given by every single woman from every single class and background.

  But while the war raged on around the world a smaller but no less explosive little battle was being played out in the nursery.

  Ever since the evacuees, who were mainly from the docks of the East End, had arrived at the village scout hut fresh off the train from St. Pancras, they had made a big impact on the village. Those who didn’t come from the docks lived on the Peabody Estates in Shoreditch or Stepney. These people knew a thing or two about community, and after a few scraps to begin with, blended in seamlessly with the locals and enriched village life enormously.

  All the evacuee boys had colorful nicknames like Leftie, Swannie, and Spanner. Maybe the village boys with nicknames of their own such as Podge, Fisty, Stallion, and Mr. Patch—so-named because he missed a patch when potato picking—recognized fellow characters in their midst because they were welcomed with open arms, albeit with plenty of teasing.

  Football united them, and Podge and his mates pitted their skills against Spanner and his team in huge matches on the common, sometimes as many as thirty a side.

  The back slang the evacuees spoke bamboozled the local lads. By putting the letter from the back of a word at the front and adding an a they created a whole new language that they used when they didn’t want the natives to understand them. The local lads gave as good as they got t
hough and ribbed them mercilessly when they caught them hunting for eggs in the trees.

  There was widespread disbelief at how little the evacuees knew of country life. Martin the milkman was stunned when he heard tell of one little boy instructing his younger brothers and sisters not to touch a drink called milk for it could kill them. Fortunately, Martin’s excellent milk won them all round and must have done them some good, as this boy’s younger brother went on to play football for England.

  Despite their cheek the evacuee boys were very respectful of their elders and always tipped their caps to the police, the vicar, and the doctor, as well as to me.

  But there was one person I couldn’t warm to, no matter how hard I tried.

  Gladys Trump was the mother of four-year-old Jimmy, an evacuee from the poorest slum district of the East End. Single mother Gladys was fiercely protective of Jimmy and her eleven other older children, so protective in fact that she had insisted on being evacuated with “ ’er boys.” She’d packed in her cleaning job and got on the evacuee train with them.

  To her credit, Gladys had got herself a job in a nearby factory and was really making a go of it in Redbourn. Though I respected her in many ways, I also found her infuriating beyond belief. Not since Mrs. Bunce and I had locked horns had I been engaged in such a battle of wills.

  Gladys was an imposing woman even though she was no more than five feet two inches. She had beady dark eyes that glared through a cloud of cigarette smoke, which wafted up from the fag permanently welded between her thin lips. Gladys had had a hard life and it showed on her face. She must have been pretty once, but now her face was weather-beaten and pinched, ravaged by a lifetime of raising twelve children on her own.

  As I saw her push open the nursery door that morning my heart sank. She spotted me and straightaway I saw her thick jaw tighten and start to twitch.

  Uh-oh. I was in for a tongue-lashing, and I knew precisely what it would be about. The first time Jimmy and Gladys turned up, I had mentioned that he, like all the other children, would be bathed every day. She had reacted as if I were suggesting he be boiled alive.

  Pushing her face so close to mine, I could smell the rotten odor of stale nicotine and last night’s ale, Gladys let rip. “Oi,” she hissed. “Make sure my Jimmy don’t ’ave a bleedin’ bath today, all right. ’E’ll catch ’is death a cold.”

  Drawing myself up to my full height, I said as politely as I could muster, “Jimmy needs a bath, Mrs. Trump. All the children here are bathed in the morning.”

  Her eyes glittered dangerously as she leaned back and crossed her arms. They were so big they were like legs of mutton.

  “I’m tellin’ yer, he ain’t ’aving no bath, or yer’ll ’ave me to deal wiv.”

  With that she cackled loudly, revealing a row of rotten brown stumps for teeth.

  As she stomped off, I took a deep breath through my nose and exhaled slowly out my mouth.

  After dealing with Mrs. Whitehead and Lady Villiers I wasn’t about to be scared off by the likes of Gladys Trump. Taking Jimmy’s hand, I marched him through the nursery to where Joy was standing. She was just finishing off bathing a few other children in the vast white stone sink.

  “Joy. Help me undress Jimmy, will you? He needs a bath.”

  Poor little Jimmy. He didn’t protest, in fact he looked rather pleased to be relieved of the weird assortment of garments he was wearing. His damp little trousers were held together with a safety pin and his flimsy top was ripped and filthy.

  I gasped when I saw his body. He was pitifully thin, and his scrawny little torso was covered in angry-looking pus-filled blisters.

  “Little treasure,” I said, trying to soothe him.

  I didn’t like the look of that one bit. It looked like impetigo, a highly infectious bacterial skin condition. I made a note to call Nurse Sybil Trudgett, the district nurse in these parts who came to the nursery regularly to check over the children.

  Poor Jimmy was filthy dirty. I don’t mean the sort of dirt that floats away in water. His skin was almost dyed brown by ground-in dirt, and he smelled, oh, how he smelled.

  Ignoring the acrid smell of urine, Joy and I gently washed him. We’d never get him totally clean, but we could get the worst of it off. In later life I heard of some billeters dunking evacuees from the slum districts in sheep dip and shaving their heads to rid them of dirt and lice. Well, I wouldn’t stand for that here. I wouldn’t fail little Jimmy. These children needed to be respected; they were the future generations of citizens who would rebuild the world after this awful war was over, Jimmy included.

  Wrapping his shivering, scrawny little body up in a towel, I helped Joy dry him off and change him into his clean nursery overalls.

  Bless him. His little blue eyes shone with gratitude. His face, now that it wasn’t caked in dirt, looked so young and innocent.

  “Fanks,” he said, with a sniff. A ferocious woman might have been raising him, but he was a little sweetheart.

  “Now for your medicine,” I said, smiling.

  His nose wrinkled up in disgust.

  “Don’t worry.” I laughed. “It’s only cod-liver oil. All the children have to have a tablespoonful each morning. It’ll keep you nice and healthy.”

  Jimmy joined the line of other little children waiting for their daily dose.

  I tried not to laugh as each child reacted the same way, with faces grimacing and noses screwed up in disgust as the fishy oil trickled down their throats. Seconds later drops would dribble back out down their chins and down the front of their overalls. No amount of boiling in the old copper would ever get the fish oil stains out of those now.

  I could hardly blame them. Kathleen and I used to dread having to take it as children. In fact, poor Kathleen, being a sickly baby, was slathered in a mixture of cod-liver oil and malt, then wrapped in cotton wool. I’ll never forget the smell. Still, as the old proverb by British clergyman Robert Burton goes, “What can’t be cured must be endured.” For everything else, there was cod-liver oil. David still takes his daily dose today!

  Next it was Jimmy’s turn.

  He eyed the spoon suspiciously, like it was an unexploded bomb.

  “I don’t wanna,” he cried.

  “Come on,” I said brightly. “Upsy-daisy, hold your nose. Swallow hard, and down she goes.”

  Spluttering, he gulped hard and shuddered.

  “Bleedin’ ’orrible,” he muttered.

  “Language, Jimmy,” I said.

  He hung his head, and then looked at me with big solemn eyes. “Sorry, Nurse.”

  With that he went to join the rest of the children, who were having their hair combed for nits.

  Since little Johnnie had brought nits back, they’d gone round the nursery like wildfire. In the days before modern lotions and potions, we just had to comb each child’s hair daily. It was a long and laborious task, and no sooner was one child nit free than another would be reinfected. We fought a losing battle with them.

  Just then a high-pitched scream echoed through the nursery, followed a second later by a wild-eyed Pat racing through the room.

  “What on earth?” I gasped. I thought the roof had come off.

  “My hair,” screamed Pat. “My hair. They’re everywhere.”

  The poor woman clawed at her waist-length silver hair with her bony hands.

  “I’ve got nits everywhere. I can feel them crawling on my scalp,” she shrieked.

  She was beside herself. The sight of this elderly lady screaming like a banshee had the children in fits of giggles.

  “Beryl and Betty,” I snapped, “take Pat outside and comb her hair through, will you.”

  “Now, now, children,” I said, clapping my hands and attempting to restore order. “Outside to play at once, please.”

  Returning to my small office, I sank into my chair and let my head rest on the desk for a second. Between Gladys Trump, the children, and the nits, I was wrung out, and the day had barely begun.

  The upside t
o all this work was that I really was too busy and tired to dwell on my heartache over horrid Henry. I hadn’t heard much from Little Cranford since I left. Susan kept me updated a bit, though, and apparently Henry and his fiancée weren’t very happy. Little wonder. Threatening to sue your intended for breach of promise is hardly the best start to married life!

  That evening, when every child had been collected, there was just one little one sitting on his own in a chair at reception.

  Jimmy.

  “His mum’s late again,” said Joy. “Factories close at half past five, but I reckon she tootles off to the pub.”

  “You get off. You have a bus to catch,” I said.

  Turning to Jimmy, I sighed. What was I going to do about this woman? She knew the rules: all children to be collected by six. We all had buses to catch and homes to go to.

  When she finally arrived, we glared at each other, and she left with Jimmy without saying a word.

  All night Gladys played on my mind. There was no doubt she loved her son, but to me she was morally degenerate. What kind of woman allowed her child to get so dirty he smelled of urine and contracted skin infections?

  The next morning I opened the door and who was standing there, casting a dark shadow over the doorway? Gladys Trump herself.

  Cold, calculated fury flashed over her face, and her clenched knuckles were turning white.

  “ ’Ow dare ya,” she hollered. “It’s a bleedin’ disgrace.”

  Her face grew redder as her voice got louder. Little flecks of spittle flew from her mouth onto my face.

  “Whodya fink you are? He ain’t never had a barf in his life. He don’t need a barf now. Keep yer ’ands offa ’im.”

  “I won’t make any apologies for bathing your son, Mrs. Trump,” I said, trying to keep my cool.

  “Well, I’ve put a stop to yer little game so I ’ave.”

  With that she shrieked with laughter and stomped off to the munitions factory.

  I shook my head as I watched her bowl her way across the common, scratching her head and scattering chickens as she walked.